I'm off to Massachusetts again this week so I went to Border's to get some reading (always have to get double what I'll actually read because half will be horrible) for the trip. MD came along and, making conversation, I remarked that I am often approached in stores and asked, "Excuse me, do you work here.?"

At Border's we split up. When I saw her again she yelled, "It's all your fault! I blame you." Some little old lady had approached her for assistance. MD just turned 15.

I told her it's the curse of looking like we know what we're doing and to wait until she's wandering around strange towns and folks approach her for directions.

I came home from work Thursday and see Paul has it as wallpaper, too. He says, "There are 115 craters."

"Slow day, huh?"

"I put a red pixel in each crater and then wrote a program to count them. It's for my game."

He's been writing a game for the last several years A lot of it has been taken up with randomly generating realistic worlds so he's done a lot of reading on geography and geology, so the worlds look awesome but so far weather has thwarted him, despite his readings.

Lol! I've had that happened to me as well. I was wandering around one of the buildings here on campus and some guy came up to me and asked where this conference room was. I had no clue! So I directed him to the only one I knew of and hoped it was right.

I expect the only danger from the trip will be of my head exploding. The people HQ think we are hicks, never mind that Chicago is several times larger than Boston, and treat us that way, at least our current team.

THe rest of the time I will read and write. I did lots of writing on the last trip, not that I found it all to be publishable after.

It's more techno-hick. The last trip out there we were briefedtutored in the proecedure for our new team. As far as we were concerned we showed them up but they were unconvinced. However, the best part has remained secret until now.

Towards the end of the meeting, the Easterners were bemoaning the changes to the stock purchase plan and the senior guy goes, "And what about options? I haven't heard of anybody getting stock options in awhile." I quietly smirked to myself. I got options in the most recent round.

Well, it turns out, I'm twiddling my thumbs all Thursday after a 10AM meeting so I'll be happy to get those shoes... What size were they again?

Off there myself this morning. To the Boston Medical Complex to kick my heels. I wish it were in nicer part of town, then I could kick my heels and be entertained at the same time.

The shoes are Turkish slippers, size 8 and in to be resoled. I have the ticket somewhere but I think it's safe to assume I'll be able to describe them.

It is good to be considered a financial hick. Sounds like a pretentious lot to me. I'd say blow Thursday afternoon on Cape but the drive is over an hour and the gas is through the roof. Speaking of which...damn.

I refuse to say what that looks like. Wouldn't it have been easier...nevermind; Paul had a slow day.

Buy the kid a bike with training wheels. I should have. Meaghan gets a refund check from her job. Does she give it to her financially abused mommy? No. She folds it and wedges it in her pocket and, in honor of the day, I refrain from hanging her upside-down by her heels.

She says she already bought me an Aerosmith cd (with "Jaded" in it O.O). What does that have to do with it? I let her listen to it!